✔️ 360° review basics

The basics of running a 360° review process using HCM Deck

In this article:

1. People involved in a 360° review
2. Permissions
3. 360° review process overview

People involved in a 360° review 

Before we describe the process, it’s important to clarify who’s involved and what role they play. 

Participant — a person who is being reviewed. When a review administrator creates a review, they decide who the participants should be. Participants are responsible for things like writing a self-review and nominating reviewers.

Reviewer — a person who is responsible for writing reviews about participants. Reviewers do not have to be participants themselves (but they often are). They can be nominated by the participants or selected by review administrators. 

Approver — a person responsible for finalizing the review results for a participant. By default, the approver is the participant’s direct manager. The approver for a specific participant can be changed by the review administrator. Approvers are by default nominated to write a review about the participant. 

Review administrator –– people who are able to create and edit review processes and monitor their progress. To manage review processes in HCM Deck that person needs to have the system role permission: “360° reviews - manage” assigned. 

One person can play different roles during one review process, for example a manager can be a participant, a reviewer, and an approver. 

Permissions

1. To create, manage, and monitor reviews, the user needs the “360° review - manage” permission assigned.
2. To participate in a review, review others, and approve reviews, users don't need any permissions. 

360° review process overview

Before the review starts:

1. Make sure that the skills assigned to participants are correct

The questions in the 360° review are automatically generated based on the skills assigned to participants. So it’s important to check that all skills are assigned correctly, have behaviors (if necessary) and have appropriate levels with descriptive labels. 

2. Add permissions for review administrators

Assign the system role “360° reviews — manage” to review administrators, so they can create, view, and edit 360° reviews.

3. Review administrators create a new review 

The process of creating a new review consists of 3 steps:

1. Selecting participants
2. Editing the review form template (writing the form introduction and optionally adding open-ended questions). 
3. Adding the start (the earliest date for writing reviews) and end date (where participants and reviewers can no longer complete forms) and decide when a notification reminder should be sent out. 

The review starts:

4. Participants write self-reviews and nominate reviewers

If a 360° review was created successfully, then on the start date, participants get a notification prompting them to complete their self-review and nominate reviewers. While the responsibility to select and make sure that the reviewers submit their forms rests on participants, administrators can monitor this process and change the reviewers if needed. 

5. Reviewers complete review forms

Once the reviewers get nominated, they can write reviews for participants. All answers will be visible to the approver and the participant once the review ends. 

6. Review admins monitor the process 

As mentioned before, review admins can monitor the review progress and react when necessary. They can change the reviewers and the approver for the participant at any time. 

The review ends:

7. Approvers hold the final review meeting with participants

When the review ends, both the approver and the participants can see the answers. This is the time for the approver to hold the final review meeting to go over the results and help the participant interpret the results. Based on the meeting and the answers, the approver needs to select the final level for each reviewed skill. 

8. Approver finalizes the results 

Once the final meeting has been held, the approver can see the review summary, and finalize the results. When they finalize the results, the skill levels assigned to the participant will be updated (unless there was no change in skill levels). Once the results are finalized, the participant will also be able to see them in the results preview.